10 year old kidnapped on way to school

A 10 year old Christian girl named Aney Tariq was kidnapped on 4th September while on the way to school in Gujranwala in North East Pakistan.  The same day her kidnapper, Haider Butt claimed that of her own will she had converted to Islam and married him.  The police are doing nothing about it.

Wilson Chowdhry of the BPCA said :

"Once again we have an implausible claim that a 10 year old girl freely agrees to convert and marry an assailant, in an obvious cover up of the serious crime of kidnapping and presumed rape.  It always seems to be the young and vulnerable who suddenly 'of their own free will' convert to Islam and marry their kidnappers / rapists?  Moreover these pernicious rapists try and cover their crime with a cloak of piety."  

Pakistani law states 18 is the legal age for marriage, while many Islamic laws state the age is 16.  However many extreme sects of Islam claim that a girl can be married when she first menstruates.  According to her family, even under this paedophile's charter, the marriage was illegitimate as Aney had not started her periods.

The rate of kidnap and rape of Christian girls and women in Pakistan -  and this does not include victims of other minorities - is thought to be at least 2 a day, and most of these cases involve claims that the victims freely converted to Islam and then married (one of) their rapists.

Source

Chief Justice of Pakistan wins International Award for complicity in persecution!

Video of protestors confrontation at the awards ceremony

The British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) lent its support to protests today against the giving of a world-class award to the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court,  Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.  The International  Council of Jurists (IJC) is giving him the award today in London.  The BPCA argues that giving such an award to a man who has just passed down cases more in accord with Sharia law than international standards of justice is a slap in the face of the Chief Justice’s recent victims, Hindu women whose kidnap, rape and forced conversion and marriage Chaudhry upheld.  In addition, he dismissed representations by the leaders of the Hindu community seeking protection for their vulnerable girls.  

Mr Wilson Chowdhury, chairman of the BPCA, said ‘This is yet another case illustrating the contempt for the rights of minorities in Pakistan.  One girl, Rinkel Kumari, cried for her parents  in court and clearly stated she had been forced against her will to marry a Muslim boy, but the Chief Justice ignored her clear testimony and distress and handed her to her ‘husband’.  It is an insult to the minorities of Pakistan these international jurists persist in giving such an award to a man who makes himself and the state of Pakistan so complicit in the persecution of minorities.  The case sets another precedent, and the fact that this award is not being rescinded is another precedent.  The IJC is in effect making itself complicit and validating the systematic kidnap, rape, forced marriage and conversion of vulnerable minorities in Pakistan.’


He went on to add 'Should someone still be given a community award for previous good actions when they have recently also rioted and vandalized property?  The same principle applies here.  The IJC is spectacularly proving the old adage that the law is an ass - and is discrediting itself in the process.'

Other commitments prevented BPCA representatives joining in the protest.   The BPCA counters assertions that such girls voluntarily convert to Islam and sometimes say so by noting that it is routine in such cases for the kidnappers to threaten to kill their families or bring false blasphemy charges against them if the girls do not say they have married and converted voluntarily. 

Peter Tatchell speaks out

We found a video where the controversial and seemingly indefatigable gay rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, speaks out against forced marriages of minority women in Pakistan, and where he urges people to challenge the Prime Minister over the issue.  He syas that if Pakistan doesn't listen and improve its human rights record, then not a penny of our money should go to Pakistan in aid.  For once we say 'Amen' to Peter Tatchell.

Where it's even worse.....

In the last post we talked about the latest case of the kidnap of Christian girls and their rape, forced conversion and marriage in Pakistan, and noted that it was happening at the rate of (at least) one a week. Spare a thought for our brothers and sisters, the Copts of Egypt. After the 'Arab Spring' Wahhabi and Salafist movements have mushroomed with funding from Saudi Arabia. These groups are paying Muslims per convert. Unsurprisingly, the rate of abduction has shot up in past while. In one city alone the rate is 2-3 per day. Muslim University students are encouraged to get close to and sexually violate Coptic girls in the age range of 9 to 15. The tactic is to sexually blackmail them and shame them in front of their parents (photographs etc) to coerce them to run away and thus be more vulnerable. They are coerced into converting and marrying.

Salafist groups, police and state security combine to provide a strong infrastructure. The girls are held in houses procured especially for the purpose, the police refuse to pay attention to the girls families. And the Salafi groups have set up a group to deliberately counter and smear the efforts of the Coptic community to get the girls back. The Orwellian titled 'Alliance for the Support of New Muslim Females' has staged against the Coptic church, accusing it of kidnapping girls who have converted to Islam.

This new tactic explains why by far the highest proportion of 'converts' to Islam are from young and underage Coptic women. It can't even be (fully) blamed on normal Islamic practice, since it is deemed alright for the husband, the head of the house, to be a Muslim while his wife isn't. It is only deemed detestable if the 'subservient' wife is a Muslim and the husband is not. Thus these events cannot be about some kind of Romeo-Juliet romances across the religious divide. The goal is not the marriage of in love couples but the open promotion of sexual coercion and blackmail to induce conversion to Islam.

Elements of the security forces, courts, police, University officials and Muslim clergy are openly promoting and facilitating this policy. The supposedly 'pious' Muslims are engaging in mass rape and paedophilia and teaching their followers to do the same.

Even before the Revolution such practices were widespread, with tactics used including telling Christian women that their fathers were seriously ill in hospital and asking for them, and then snatching them off the street as they rushed to the hospital, or straight grabbing them from the street and aneasthatising them, marrying them in this condition, gang raping them for weeks, and then divorcing them. Fathers who protest have been accused of 'promoting sectarian strife' by the police and had their homes stolen from them.

Even where such girls are taken into state care homes (in one recent case it seems the girls claimed that they had freely converted to Islam because they feared retribution from their own families) there is intense intimidation, often with no Christian presence in such institutions, and the machinations of Sharia associations and threatening by Hijab encloaked social workers.

For more information see here, here and here.

Yet another kidnap and forced conversion and marriage

It's become a tired, tired old story, because Pakistani culture and corruption and religious discrimination has not changed - at least not for the better. Young Christian girl is kidnapped by a Muslim(s), is forced to convert and to marry her kidnapper - in effect being triply raped - in will and freedom as well as in body. This follows the reports recently about another case which we reported - that of Farah Hatim.

In the latest case, just 20 miles from the capital, Islamabad, a young Christian girl named Mariam Gill went out to the market and never came back. Witnesses saw a local man, an important local businessman, Muhammed Junaid, physically snatching her from the market. He had asked her to marry him and had been refused, so he took the woman he lusted after anyway, by force, and typically, cloaked his rape by claiming he had been a pious Muslim and converted her to Islam. Again, typically, the police prevaricated, refused the application of the distraught family, and treated the Christian family with disdain by showing no interest in the matter. A local police officer, Amir Mirza, praised the culprit as 'a respectable Muslim businessman' and claimed, against all evidence, that the girl had converted and married 'of her own free will'.

Again, typically, the local Muslim religious leader, Maulana Hafeez Aziz, praised the perpetrator of this wickedness as a 'pious Muslim' and a 'true follower of Muhammed' who has 'fulfilled Sharia', who had done an act that 'only a true Muslim could do'. He stated he had 'converted Mariam to Islam' and then 'celebrated' her 'marriage'.

The lies of both the religious and secular authorities became apparent when local officials questioned Mariam. She forthrightly stated that she had been abducted and forced to convert and would not renounce her faith in Christ. The officials ordered that the girl should be returned to her family and the two 'sides' should reach an 'agreement'. However, again typically, Muhammad Junaid showed his approach - he demanded the girl he had violated thrice over be returned to him for his pleasure and continued abuse, or there would be 'terrible consequences'.

Yet again, those who abuse Christian women (and indeed those of other minorities - Hindu girls are fleeing to India in increasing numbers to escape this cadre of sadistic rapists) indulge in a culture of impunity where these perpetrators of serious crimes are praised and lauded as model citizens and religionists while the victims and their families are threatened and intimidated.

The local bishop is quoted as saying 'the cases of forced conversion are rising at an alarming rate. The matter needs to be checked, kidnapping of Christian girls is becoming a common practice in Punjab. Law enforcement agencies need to enforce the law'

Amen to that.

He also says 'It is time to take concrete action to guarantee the safety of minorities in Pakistan'.

Amen to that too.

Thank you to the people at Asia News for bringing this to our attention.